


Yel-nel-dath

by sixbeforelunch



Series: Pi'maat [3]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: F/M, Family Dynamics, Recovery, Sherlock Holmes Fandom in the 24th Century, Stargazing, Trauma, Vulcan Culture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 23:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14147331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: Yel-nel-dath - constellation; a familiar pattern of stars [the Vulcan language dictionary]





	Yel-nel-dath

**Author's Note:**

> CN: While there is no on-screen rape, there is a discussion of rape and its aftermath.
> 
> This is the third story in a series, and will probably not make much sense without having read the first two.

"--really think that an emotional display is going to get you what you want?"

"Well if you won't listen to _logic_ \--"

T'Lin did her best to ignore the argument taking place elsewhere in the house between her mother and Suvin. Even if he was being rudely loud, Suvin still deserved his privacy. Xan, her father, was surely more aware of the cause of the strife than T'Lin was. He did not look up from his project.

A door slammed.

T'Lin raised an eyebrow. "Dramatic."

That brought Xan's head up. "You once threatened to run away and join the Orion Free Merchants because we told you a ley-mata would make a poor pet."

She flushed at the memory. "I was young." 

"So is your brother." 

She recalled the incident. "And that argument was not really about ley-mata."

"Of course it was not about ley-mata," Xan said. "It was about your need to have a say in the family decision making process. A valid need, which we addressed later, after you had calmed down."

"You could have addressed it at the time."

"I might have, had it been expedient to do so," Xan said. "As a parent it is always best to address the underlying cause of a child's trouble, but sometimes in the moment it is necessary to enforce parental authority and deal with the aftermath later."

T'Lin considered this. "Parenting advice?"

"To be filed away for when you need it." He turned his attention back to the scale model replica of a starship of some kind. Had she asked, her father would have been able to provide her with every detail of its history and construction. Ancient Vulcan space exploration was one of his hobbies. T'Lin knew only that it had the general shape of a cargo vessel, and did not appear to have the capacity for warp. She was not inclined to ask for more information. On the few occasions she had, her father had gotten...verbose.

Xan steepled his fingers and contemplated the half-completed model. There was a meditative logic in their construction. Speed was not the point, which was good, because Xan had never taken less than two years to complete one.

T'Lin focused on her book. According to _The Mars Review_ , Jake Sisko's new collection was "required reading". The word "sublime" had been thrown about rather freely in the article she had read. Typical Human hyperbole, but the work was well-crafted. The language was sparse and forceful, with the occasional turn of phrase that was truly beautiful. Sisko had refrained from excess emotionalism, preferring to state facts and let the reader react as they would. She understood why the one of the premiere book maker's guilds on Vulcan had printed it.

She had gotten a copy of that work. She preferred codex-form to electronic when possible, and Na'Vri-math made fine books. This one was small and thin. The cover was decorated in a geometric pattern, and the interior illustrations were Bajorian landscapes. She ran her fingers across the thick paper and it occurred to her that at one time this simple object would have been beyond the reach of all but the extremely wealthy. And even the steward of the grandest High Clan house would have paled at the cost of paper of this quality.

She turned the page to the next essay, titled "We the Bloody but Not Beaten" and closed the book with a snap that made Xan glance at her. She sent him a reassurance through their bond--fainter than the one she shared with Veral or even her mother, but strong enough for her to assure him of her wellbeing--and set the book aside. The essay was undoubtedly of the same high quality as the rest, but she was tired of thinking about the war.

She got up and walked to the bookshelves. The rest of her family did not share her appreciation for being surrounded by books, but they indulged her by allowing her to store most of her collection in the shared space. She traced her fingers across the spines of the books. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw T'Lyra walk up next to Xan. He brushed his fingers against hers. T'Lin looked away. She touched _The Glass Palace_ but left it where it was, picked up an inoffensive book of poetry, and returned to her seat.

She made it two lines into the first poem before setting that book aside as well. She was restless, unsettled.

She tried and failed to interest herself in several other books, but eventually accepted that she had no mind for reading.

T'Lyra was watching her. "Are you alright?" she asked, after T'Lin returned the fifth failed book to its place.

She sighed. "I don't know what I am." She looked out through the large picture window. The shared living space was on the second floor of the house. The view was not as grand as it was from the roof, but she could see the stars coming out over the garden outside.

Xan got up and laid a hand on her shoulder. T'Lin reached up and rested her hand on top of her father's, accepting the affection-care-concern that he offered.

She stepped away and took a jacket from where it hung on the wall. It was Veral's jacket, the one he wore to sit on the roof in the evenings because he disliked the cold, but he disliked being cooped up in the house more. It was much too large for her, but it smelled like him. She wouldn't have been able to defend the logic of her choice, but fortunately her parents did not ask her too.

 _Home is where your logic need not always be perfect_ , she thought.

"I will be in the garden," she said. She briefly looked around for her medication before realizing that Veral had a spare hypo in the pocket of the jacket. Of course.

It was dark outside, but she could see well enough to stay on the stone walkway. Without conscious thought, she found herself in front of the telescope and walked up the few steps to sit down in front of it. Recalling the astronomical calendar and what would be visible tonight, she sought out Arish. With a slight adjustment to the focus, it came into perfect clarity.

The fourth planet of the Vulcan system, a gas giant marked by swirling patterns of green and gold, Arish sat like a gem against the velvet black of space. T'Lin sat back from the eyepiece and looked up at the sky. With the naked eye, it appeared to be only one point of light among thousands, currently sitting just below the Ril'skan constellation. 

Nocturnal insects buzzed faintly and there was a rustle of wind through the plants, but it was otherwise quiet in the garden. She wanted soka, but not enough to return to the house and get it.

Adjusting the telescope, she found Krish'at, the third planet in the Vulcan system. It too was a gas giant, but smaller than Arish, and predominantly orange-red in color. It was rare that both planets were visible in the sky at the same time. She sought out Kavish, one of Krish'at's nine moons. It was visible, but only just. There were limits to what even the best ground-based optical telescope could detect.

Even as a barely discernible dark spot against the larger Krish'at, the sight of Kavish brought a sort of comfort. It had been the first extra-planetary world that Vulcan had stepped onto. Not conducive to Vulcan life, it was now mostly uninhabited, but it had been the start. A full century before Surak had published his first work, when progress had been hobbled by war and poverty, and emotion rather than reason had ruled, they had managed to escape the gravity well of their home world. They had left footprints there, now long obscured by time.

Even before that journey, the moons of Krish'at had loomed large in the collective imagination. _The Glass Palace_ was set on Kavish. As a child, T'Lin had found it and the other romances that had come out of the Vadria era in Han'shir. Nearly all of them were set on one or another of the moons of Krish'at, those moons being imagined as lush and habitable rather than barren and cold as they were in reality. 

The novels had included encounters with alien life forms, conspiracies, fights, and very often two people forming a mating bond. She had spent many hours tucked up in one corner of the house or another, devouring Sevar and T'Hara and V'Amat, not concerned in the least that the science was factually incorrect, that the plots were often tired retreads of earlier works, or that the characters flew into emotional rages at the smallest provocation--though her mother, upon picking one of the books up and reading it, had immediately pulled T'Lin into a conversation about how poorly the books conveyed the realities of adult relationships, especially with respect to sexuality. It had been a relief. Men in the romances of that era tended to go into pon farr at the most inconvenient times--and generally while trapped in a cave, for some reason. There was of course always a viable mate at hand, so no one ever died seizing and foaming at the mouth, but the interactions represented had been unsuitable for a child still a long way from understanding how such things actually worked. T'Lin had spent a few months very concerned every time her mother had gone out, thinking she might somehow end up trapped with a feverish male.

Yet for all that, she remembered the books fondly. Modern Vulcan fiction, particularly fiction meant for adults, was rare. What they did have was sterile. Frequently moralistic. Vulcan had largely given up fiction when it had embraced ch'thia. Neither Surak nor any of his followers had actively spoken against it, but the emphasis on truth, on avoiding things which improperly roused the emotions...fiction had been left behind.

As they had also left behind internment camps, starving children, wars, the poisoning of the land and air, and hundreds of other atrocities that had characterized the emotional past, T'Lin thought it a sacrifice well worth making, but it was still a sacrifice.

She leaned forward again and looked into the telescope. Krish'at's clouds looked peaceful, and belied the pressure and temperature and violence of the storms actually happening in the atmosphere. A step behind her made her sit up. Veral stepped up onto the telescope platform holding her jacket and a cup of soka. He set the soka down next to her and offered her her jacket. "Perhaps we can trade?"

"It would be a spectacle to see you attempt to wear mine," she said, and he raised a brow at her, "But a trade would be the more logical course."

She slipped into her own garment and took a long drink of the soka, savoring the warmth and the bittersweet taste before looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Did you bring me soka because I wanted it, or did I want it because you intended to bring it to me?"

"If we can determine the answer to that," Veral said, "we will have solved one of the fundamental mysteries of consciousness in the bonded state."

T'Lin moved down so that there was enough room for him on the bench. When he sat, she pressed against him, enjoying his warmth. Veral wrapped his arm around her. They sat in silence for a while, until Veral leaned forward and looked into the telescope's viewer. "Excellent viewing tonight." He sat back. "The quality of the night sky is one of the things I enjoy about Shi'aluk."

T'Lin recalled Shi'kahr. Like most civilized planets, Vulcan took care to preserve the night sky and nocturnal world, but a city of one point two million would have some light pollution to contend with regardless of how hard they tried. Shi'aluk had nearly perfect dark skies, and it was gratifying to hear him say that he appreciated them. T'Lin was still battling the illogical concern that he would at some point decide that the inconveniences of Shi'aluk were too much, and that he preferred to go home to Shi'kahr.

T'Aj had pointed out that, first, Veral had signed a six year contract with the Vulcan Medical Authority and was duty-bound to the clinic in Shi'aluk, and second, Veral was as attached to her as she was to him and even if he did want to leave Shi'aluk he was unlikely to do it unless T'Lin joined him. Both things were true, and had T'Lin not been left by her first bondmate at the age of nineteen, an age when her brain was undergoing it's second to last major development period and everything that happened stuck with more force that was really warranted, she might not have had such trouble believing that Veral was going to stay with her.

"We saved your dinner."

"Yes. I'm not hungry at present, but I will eat."

She turned to face him. "You've been working a great deal."

He inclined his head. "There is a great deal that needs to be done." He must have sensed her concern, because he sent reassurance though the bond and said, "I am being careful not to overwork myself. And this is a very different environment from the _Eian_. I have family here. No one on the _Eian_ saved me dinner."

She rested her head against his shoulder. There was fondness in the bond, and when he said 'family' he meant her relatives, not just his own. This too was gratifying.

"Your mother said you seemed discontent," Veral said.

"Not discontent. Disordered, perhaps."

"Is there a reason?"

"If I knew the reason, I would be addressing it," she said, more sharply than he deserved.

Veral didn't respond in kind. He looked up at the stars.

"Computer," Veral said, and was answered with a chime. "Is the 'aucdet system visible from this location?"

"Affirmative."

"Adjust the telescope to view the 'aucdet system."

The computer took control, and rotated the telescope until it located the requested system. Veral leaned forward and looked through the viewer.

"Computer what is the distance between Vulcan and the 'aucdet system?"

"The distance is 178.35592 light years."

Veral sat back. T'Lin leaned forward to look. At this distance, even through the telescope it was only a point of light.

"The _Eian_ was stationed 1.8 light days out from where that battle took place. And so 1.8 days after the battle ended, we had wards full of casualties, a morgue full of the dead, and when we looked out of the window, we could see flashes of light from where the battle had taken place. Some of my colleagues said that it was no different from seeing a recording of the battle, but to me it seemed...different somehow."

"I can understand why it seemed so. By one model of the universe, you were seeing the propagation of causality in normal space."

"In 176.49625 years, we can sit here and see that same light," Veral said quietly. "Though of course this telescope would not register it. All that destruction will leave a mark too faint to be picked up by an optical telescope." He took a slow breath. "But I do not think causality will wait that long in any case."

"Warp drive does alter the calculations significantly." She finished the soka. "Perhaps it is causality which has me so disordered."

Without warning, he stood up, hand reaching instinctually for a knife that was not there. It took her a moment to figure out what he was reacting to.

She reached out and touched his forearm. "There is no threat. You are sensing a l'dath. It is a predator, but we are not its prey."

He sat down, but did not entirely relax. Unsurprising. The l'dath preyed mostly on insects and small reptiles and was harmless to the planet's apex species, but Vulcans were hardwired to react to a predator skittering on the edges of their perception. T'Lin had grown up with the l'dath, and was entirely desensitized to them, but if she had sensed a predator unfamiliar to her, she would have reacted similarly.

Veral possessed greater psionic talent than she did, and he remained watchful for several minutes after the l'dath had moved outside of her perception. When he finally relaxed, she said, "They breed in the winter. You will sense them everywhere. You will desensitize."

"How pleasant the winters in Shi'aluk sound," he said wryly.

She flinched, grateful for the dark that hid the reaction. Shi'aluk in the winter was cold, and wet, and nothing at all like Shi'kahr. If he found the winters unbearable--

"Aduna."

She looked at him.

"I understand that you have difficulty believing this, but I am speaking the entire truth when I tell you that I have no plans to leave Shi'aluk for at least the next several years no matter how damp the winters are, or how many new animals I must become accustomed to, and I have no desire to ever go anywhere without you."

"I know. And yet..."

"Yes. There is a part of me that would very much like to have a...conversation with your former bondmate."

"It is my own fault for being so affected."

"He was needlessly cruel in what he said to you before he left."

He held out two fingers, and T'Lin reached out to touch him, closing her eyes as his mind brushed gently against hers and assured her of his warmth-kindness-care. _Taluhk nash-veh k'dular, ashayam_. They never spoke the word aloud, but in the privacy of their minds, he called her beloved.

 _Taluhk aduna t'nash-veh._ My cherished husband.

He drew his hand back, but he stared at her a few moments longer.

She looked back at the stars. 

"Yel-nel-dathlar," she said quietly.

"What of the constellations?" Veral asked.

"If you trace the etymology back far enough, the original meaning of the word was 'unchanging'. But they do change. They change slowly, but they change. Everything changes. The things we most cherish are ripped away from us." She shook her head. 

After a few moments of silence, Veral said slowly, "You said that perhaps it is causality that has you unsettled."

"I want to go back to the way it was before. Before the war. Before I had to make contingency plans for my pain disorder every time I leave the house. Before the smell of hospitals made me want to vomit. Before your nightmares. Before Ulin died. Before all of it. But we can't. Causality has already been set in motion, and it cannot be stopped." Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She blinked them away. But if a few fell...it was only Veral who would know. Let it be.

Veral said, "There are things that one reads about in a text book but never expects to see. Children should not--" He stopped himself. His vows permitted him to talk to her about his patients, a bondmate being one of a few people that he was allowed to break Silence with, but he was careful. In Shi'kahr it was unlikely she would ever even lay eyes one of his patients. Here, it was very possible that she would both see and talk to one of them the very next day. He tended to avoid placing her in situations where she would know more about her neighbors than she wished, even when he should have taken advantage of the provision, and talked to her of his concerns. The allowance was given for a reason, so that he would not have to shoulder every burden alone.

"Children should not bear children?" T'Lin asked. It was not hard to follow his train of thought, and it was not a secret that V'Nar had come home from the colony where she had been trapped during the war with an infant though she was only seventeen. That the encounter that had led to it had been consensual seemed unlikely. That her bondmate, no older than she, had witnessed the rape seemed disturbingly possible given that he had attacked a man in the street for getting too close to her. When pulled away, his eyes had been blank and he had been seeing nothing that was happening in the present moment, screaming, "Let her go!" over and over until someone had mercifully rendered him unconscious.

It was generally assumed that a Romulan had raped her, but the circumstances were hardly public knowledge. People simply did not like to think that a Vulcan could have done it. T'Lin wanted to ask Veral if he knew. She wanted to reassure herself that this crime had been committed by an Other and that she was safe with her own kind, but she had no right to the information, and it would be wrong to pry into that which did not concern her simply to assuage an emotional reaction.

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, seeking comfort rather than warmth.

"I cannot imagine what is going through that girl's mind."

"Saaranan's poem," T'Lin said. "Do you know it?"

"I do not."

"You are aware of the Atrocity of T'Ralor?" Velok had had five hundred women taken from the city, tied up, raped by his soldiers, and left to die from thirst in the desert sun.

"I am."

"Saaranan was one of only forty eight still alive when Srish defeated Velok and took the city back. After she was freed, she gave birth to a child, the product of rape. She wrote her poem not long after. It is not...easy to read, but it is worthwhile, I think." T'Lin paused, staring up at the stars. "She later wrote that it was supposed to be her suicide note, but that once it was finished, she decided that she would continue living, if only to spite the people who had wanted her dead." She looked back at Veral. "If you want to know what is in the minds of the traumatized, perhaps you might start by reading the words of those who have gone before them."

He inclined his head. "I will take it under advisement." His thoughts became lighter. "It seems a more worthwhile use of my time than reading _The Glass Palace_ in any case."

T'Lin entwined her fingers with his. "You said you wanted to increase your understanding of me. I suggested a book that made an impression on me during a critical phase of my development."

"Yes, and having read it, I am astonished that you are capable of adult reasoning."

"I did not say it was a good book."

"Everything about it is illogical. I can see why your mother took those books away from you."

"She did not precisely take them away from me. She simply encouraged me, strongly, to find another source of entertainment. One less riddled with factual errors and unhealthy representations of sexual relationships. Other books were scattered around the house where I was likely to see them. Eventually, one of those books was _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , and I moved on." In retrospect, her mother had probably not enjoyed being cajoled into attending the annual meeting of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Vulcan every year for the next five years, and might have wished that her daughter had moved on to something else.

He adjusted the telescope again to look at a relatively close binary star. "I am surprised you did not tell me to read Sherlock Holmes. You are clearly far more fond of it than the other."

It took her a moment to contain her surprise. "I assumed you had read at least one story."

"No."

Vulcan curriculum required some exposure to non-Vulcan literature, and many teachers assigned Sherlock Holmes to satisfy the Terran requirement, because they knew it was popular, and it was likely to please their students. Many, she supposed, was not all.

An effusive introduction to the stories sprang into her mind. She suppressed it. Veral did not care for fiction. With the exception of some poetry, he rarely read for leisure at all. He took his relaxation in other forms.

And yet he looked at her. There was resignation in the bond, but also fondness. "Tell me which one I am going to read," he said.

" _The Red-Headed League_ ," T'Lin said, after a moment of consideration.

His eyebrows rose slightly at the name, but he only said, "Very well." He ran the back of his hand along her cheek. "But aduna, I am not going with you to the Sherlock Holmes Society of Vulcan."

She looked away. "I presume my mother told you about that?"

"She did."

"The period in my life where Sherlock Holmes occupies a significant portion of my thoughts and most of my free time is over." Honesty forced her to add, "For the most part."

Veral took her hands in his. "I like you, so very much, right here and now, the end result of all the causality that has led to this moment."

She flushed, and blurted out, "You are my favorite person."

It seemed a trite thing to say, but it pleased him.

She looked up at the stars again. 

Veral stood up. "I should eat. Will you remain here?"

"I will follow you in a few minutes," T'Lin said.

He brushed his hand against hers once more, and walked away.

Without his body heat, the cold quickly grew uncomfortable. She rose and picked up the now empty soka cup, but paused to look up at the sky once more. The ribbon of the Milky Way stretched across the sky. The constellations would change, but they had not changed since she was a child, and would not change for millennia to come. One took the stability and safety one could get, and did their best to live with it. She thought of her father's hand on her shoulder, her mother's concern, Veral's affection.

"I will trust that none of my constellations are going anywhere for some time," she said softly.

She turned and walked into the house.

end


End file.
